


color

by serj



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serj/pseuds/serj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He told you that he still cared for you, and you thought you must be dreaming. Because what kind of hellish universe would give you what you’ve always wanted?</p>
            </blockquote>





	color

You didn’t feel like a Prince of Heart when the game ended. You didn’t feel like a prince of anything, really.  
You just felt like a nightmare.  
And the game never really ends, does it?  
No. You’re just given the false illusion of safety for a time, silently awaiting the day when everything falls back into pieces.  
You wish you had known this when you were a neurotic and incompetent sixteen-year-old wanting to escape his doomed and worthless life.  
The truth?  
You probably would have done it anyway.

Jake suffered in his own way, you suppose. But you think he learned a lot, too. More than you did, that’s for sure.  
At some point, he apologized. He told you that he still cared for you, and you thought you must be dreaming. Because what kind of hellish universe would give you what you’ve always wanted?

It took you a long time to accept his love. It took even longer for him to be able to convince you that the two of you should live together.  
But eventually, he did. Eventually, you let him in. What else could you do? He had a way of breaking your barriers, no matter how thick they were and how far up their walls extended.  
It seemed unfair, but at the same time, you were grateful for it.  
And here you found yourself, at two in the morning, in a cold sweat.  
The nightmares had sabotaged your dreams again.  
They always found their way in, crawling from the darkest corners of your mind, infiltrating your sleep with terrorizing visions that only the game itself could weave. You would try to awaken, and fail.  
All too late, your eyes would flutter open, your heart pounding.  
Some nights, you worried you would never wake up at all.

You probably would have flung yourself off the rooftop of your apartment building long ago if it wasn't for him. If he wasn't there, watching over you. You are so grateful for his presence, though you find it impossible to express this.

"Dirk?" He asked quietly, noticing you shiver. He was a light sleeper; he had to be, from his days of living on an island filled with beasts.  
He wrapped his tanned, scarred arms around you. “You had another nightmare, didn't you?”  
You didn’t have to respond. He knew.  
With a sigh, Jake ran a comforting hand through your hair. “You’re all right, chum,” he whispered as you tried to stop shaking.  
He began telling you stories; tales of when he was a child living in the hilltop house with his grandmother, the many adventures he had had in his jungle, and other, more obscure stories, which you assumed were based off of the countless action films he had seen.  
Eventually, his soothing voice lulled you back to sleep.

~

You woke up the next morning with a feeling in your gut that something was terribly wrong.  
You should have been relieved to see Jake snoring peacefully beside you.  
But the feeling didn’t disappear.  
Not when you climbed silently out of bed. Not when you trekked through the small, cluttered apartment and out the front door.  
Not when you ascended the staircase, despite being only dressed in boxers and a t-shirt, your bare feet tingling at the touch of cool concrete beneath them.  
No, it still remained when you walked across the rooftop, the bleak, orange sun on the horizon, illuminating the morning fog that was all too familiar in this city.  
It was still there when you stood on the edge, suddenly feeling very cold as memories of your past flooded across your mind.  
If anything, the feeling was stronger.

"DIRK!" Someone shouted from behind you, snapping you violently back into reality (whatever that was).  
You heard padded footsteps approaching, and you just knew he was wearing those ridiculous Ghostbusters socks, the ones Jane had given him last year for his birthday.  
It was unfair. It was unfair, you wanted to turn to him and scream, how he could invade your thoughts with his soothing voice and his too-green eyes and his annoying laugh and his goddamn stupid socks. It was unfair, because you existed in a bleak and colorless world, and somehow he managed to be a fucking neon rainbow, he managed to obscure all of your darkness with radiant light, and he didn’t even try. And it was most unfair that instead of being blinded, the bright and dazzling affair he brought into your enclosed world gave you life.  
But you couldn’t say these things. You could never tell him what he wanted to hear. You could never live up to his standards.  
So, as you pictured the concerned look you knew he currently wore, you told him,  
“I’m just watching the sunrise.”  
‘You’re a fucking liar,’ he should have said. ‘You were going to jump, you were going to leave me here to die like the selfish bastard you are, but I saved you. Because I’m the better person.’  
Instead, he grabbed you from behind and held you close.  
You could hear his heart beating rapidly in his chest, the fear of losing you slowly subsiding.  
“It’s a beautiful sunrise,” he replied, which your brain immediately translated to, ‘Don’t scare me like that.’  
“Don’t worry so much,” you mumbled. It meant, ‘I’m sorry.’  
You hopped down onto the flat cement of the roof to face him, and kissed him briefly. He tasted like morning breath, but so did you, most likely.  
As you held each other there, atop a shitty apartment building in a shitty town on a shitty planet in the shittiest universe imaginable, you told him the only thing you could ever and would ever say to him honestly:  
“I love you.”  
He took a deep breath, and exhaled.  
“It’s a lot of work, but love you too, Dirk.”  
And there may have been a point in your life where you didn’t believe him, just as there may have been a point in your life where it wasn’t true.  
But no longer.


End file.
